The Stories Left Behind
by Heather Cat
Summary: There are some stories that never fade, even though all that's left behind is the ghost of regret. One shot.


Stories Left Behind

            I once saw a man walking.

            I don't know quite how to describe it – there are some pictures, some images that you see everyday until they are meaningless. Repetition dulls reality, dulls colour, dulls life until even to a child it begins to lose its sense of purpose. These, I've been told, are the ones that slip through the cracks. When something can no longer be seen, is it even really there? 

            I once saw a man walking, and it was an experience that stayed with me all my life. I'm no one particular, no one that stands out, but somehow that day I saw what no one else ever could. Maybe it was because I was so young then, only seven or so, or perhaps it was because I was stubborn and refused to let any of the world pass me by. Children can be like that. But for whatever reason, for just that one day, I saw him walking.

            I've heard of others who have seen him since, though no two stories ever describe him quite the same way. Maybe there are many like him out there, in the infinite spaces between here, Junon and the end of the world. I don't know, and most days I'm glad I never will. But still, the stories come to me, and I have never been able to stop from listening with a strange feeling deep inside myself. I once wondered if I could build a story from all the pieces that are given to me; make some sense of it all. I've long since discarded the idea. Sometimes, mystery is better, and other times it's all there is.

            The first story came from a little girl, probably about the same age as I was, way back when. I remember how surprised I was, how much her story resonated with something deep inside me. It was much the same as mine, I suppose, a tale of just another someone she saw pass by in the crowd. Most often the ones who've seen him are the poor people, the beggars, the winos or the very old: the ones who often feel as if they are on the edge of invisibility themselves. Maybe there's a link between them all. Personally, I've always believed that the ones standing at the crossroads are the ones who can see both ways.

            They seem like fairytales, though I suppose they're really just every day occurrences that aren't. It's only me that knows that they're different, and I pick them out, tag them, and store them away in my memory where they won't be forgotten. To have seen him and then let him slip away completely would be too great an injustice. But they come to me from the slums and from the alleys, off-hand comments that seem to seek me out. About someone who stopped for shelter for the night before disappearing into the gray again the next morning, or a man who was walking along the shoulder of the road when the teller just happened to be passing by.

            I've seen him walking and I know him. That day, almost twenty years ago now, on a trip to Kalm with my parents a little bit of the world we don't see brushed me ever so slightly. I didn't know it then, didn't understand why when he walked past us no one seemed to see him but me. Our eyes met, but only for a second before he had been pulled into the throng once again and had faded away as if he'd never been at all. I remember that day, remember the way my parents looked at me strangely when I asked if they'd seen him, remember the way all passing eyes seemed to slip away from him without their realizing. Mostly, I remember his blue eyes.

            It's hard not to recognize him when he shows up again, in the stories, though nowhere else. Average height, a fighter's build, blond hair, and the most incredible blue eyes. Details always seem a bit sketchy, but from what I've heard he hasn't changed much in the two decades that have passed. 

            I don't know his story, or how he came to be the way he is. I don't know whether he did anything to deserve the strange fate he apparently got or if it was something he did to himself. Perhaps he was just another traveler like myself that I ran into that day, and my conviction that he's anything else is just a little crazy. But for twenty years words about him, tales of a man wandering the streets, always searching, have been haunting me. I have also never managed to find an explanation for the article in the paper I found dating back just over ninety years that detailed a supposed ghost sighting of someone matching his description identically.

            I've spent all of my life watching for him, or maybe you'd say waiting. But I have never seen him again, and I doubt I ever will. To call it a ghost story may be more accurate then I let myself think – one of a man who is always there, but never seen, who walks along the road towards a destination he still hasn't reached, always fading into the mist. I will never get to meet him and ask him what he's searching for, where he's going, or whether it's the world or himself that won't let him rest. I've still got many years ahead of me, but it's a little sad to think that someday I will die, and he will still just go on. Always the same, always searching, always disappearing into white, unreachable fog.

            There are only two places where I've never heard tell of him, though not from lack of trying. The Northern Continent is the first, and the second is the Midgar ruins. Perhaps it has something to do with the history of the place, although I don't know much about it and the only recognizable building still standing is the barest remains of a church. One day I'll have to see if I can find out.

            For now, I'll keep searching too, and maybe it will help him just a little if he knows he's not completely alone. I will never forget the cold, searching look in those eyes and their ethereal shine. Also, no matter how much I try to deny it I have long since discovered that the stories will not leave me alone. So, I like to think that maybe someday a long time from now when the world has turned again, as it always does, I'll finally find him walking down the side of my street and then he won't have to walk alone anymore. Some nights I dream of walking with him, although I can never quite see his face, and I always wake in the morning with the memory of feelings that I can never quite put a name too, though hope comes to mind.

            Once I saw a man walking.

            Someday after I too have disappeared maybe he'll finally find what he's looking for. Until then, though, he'll always be out there, somewhere on the narrow road between worlds, always fading, vanishing into the mist.

~


End file.
